New year gives us the chance to rekindle Scotland’s natural optimism

I think 2024 requires a bit of optimism, especially in the independence movement. Fortunately, I think we Scots are disposed to being more optimistic than our English neighbours.

Our southern compatriots are steeped in “declinism”, perhaps for good reason. Productivity growth in the English economy has been stalled for years while English politics is more obsessed with keeping immigrants out than fixing long-seated internal problems.

Don’t expect that to change with this year’s General Election, which will centre on Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt giving away tax cuts they can’t afford. English pessimism has given birth to political cynicism.

Whether the English electorate sees through Tory manipulation remains moot. Certainly, the latest polls show English voters have realised they were conned by the Vote Leave crowd regarding the supposed economic benefits of Brexit.

According to a survey by Opinium, only one in 10 believe that leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS against 47% think it has had a negative effect.

However, the English electorate are not very optimistic by nature, and I fear any revulsion against the spectacular failure of this Tory government – perhaps the worst since 1945 – will only drive them into the hands of more extreme populists.

Especially as Starmer’s Labour Party is offering no serious alternative. Sir Keir’s [above] dour political manner is the very epitome of Scrooge-like pessimism. Starmer would have welcomed the Ghost of Christmas Future with open arms.

I have always been intrigued by the English fantasy that they are “an island race” when, demonstrably, they occupy only part of an island, which they share (uneasily) with the Scots, Welsh and Cornish.

The truth is that the English are a culture shaped by their proximity to the Channel. They feel cut off from the mainland. Sometimes this breeds jealousy. At other times it breeds a noble self-sufficiency that then – sadly – degenerates into jingoistic imperialism.

Much of the English dislike of immigrants – which is manipulated and exaggerated by the ruling elite for its own purposes – stems from that nation’s cultural and political isolation from the European mainland. The rest of the world suffered the consequences when the English decided the rest of the world was theirs.

England’s current toxic mix of pessimism and xenophobia stems from its loss of empire and subsequent jealousy of mainland Europe. All those fanciful references to “global Britain” during the Brexit campaign betrayed a pathetic longing for a return to the glory days of empire.

But most people south of the Border – as they watch their gas bills skyrocketing and the value of their house plummet – now realise this was a pipe dream.

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The only successful Tory politicians in recent times have been those who played – for a brief time – to English nostalgia. Thus, Mrs Thatcher fought a pointless war to retain a rock in the south Atlantic (glory) while using Scottish oil revenues to cut income tax (bribery). That’s not a repeatable exercise as Rishi “Stop the Boats!” Sunak is finding out.

The Scots are different. For all our myriad faults – and we have a lot – our politics is less self-aggrandising, less personally selfish, and far less pessimistic than the English variety. We have spent the last half-century discussing how to build a new, independent state that would be more open, more equitable, and more democratic than the current ramshackle British model. No-one seriously believes – even the most vocal local Unionist – that an indy Scotland would replicate the unelected House of Lords or binge on anti-immigration rhetoric.

Again, in the 17 years of SNP administration at Holyrood, the major sins – if you can really call them sins – have been an excess of liberal intentions and a sometimes-naïve attempt to combine social democracy with the tutelage of a London Treasury bent on austerity. I for one would have preferred more anger and less political naivety, but I can’t fault the good intentions.

BUT are the Scots true optimists? Can we summon up the reserves necessary to reboot the campaign for independence and building a new nation? Can we, in 2024, rekindle our national resolve to create a better Scotland? Or will we be swept into the vortex of English declinism, pessimism and populist xenophobia writ even larger?

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We have summoned up our reserves of optimism once before. This year marks a decade since the independence referendum. Remember how that campaign was fought on a wave of optimism using – for the most part – only positive arguments? Our opponents, on the other hand, ran a wholly negative campaign. A Yes vote would see Scotland thrown out of the EU. Our trade would drop. Our taxes would rise. We would have a record national borrowing.

For one brief moment it seemed as if native Scottish optimism would triumph over endemic British pessimism. Sadly, our nerve did not hold on the day.

And the result? All the inbred pessimistic forecasts of the Unionists have come to pass – but only because we stayed in the UK vice.

I am not naive. I know the Scots have a love-hate relationship with optimism. Our ingrained romanticism – born of our landscape, our literature and our wanderings – makes us optimistic. But romanticism can crumble at the first sign of adversity.

Too many times – in sport, in politics, in life – we Scots begin with exaggerated hopes, then cave into helpless pessimism when faced with problems. We are especially prone to blaming each other rather than our adversaries. How many times have we repeated the moment in 1715 when the craven Scottish lords persuaded Bonnie Prince Charlie to retreat from Derby – just as the English king was preparing to flee London.

Yet our national myth – Bruce in the cave watching the spider weave and reweave its broken web – is all about optimism and perseverance.

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The Lowlanders and Highlanders who undertook the great migration of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries did so out of optimism as well as brutal necessity – and transformed the world. Scottish perseverance and wilful optimism gave us a host of inventions and discoveries from the telephone to television, and from anaesthetics to insulin. This is fertile ground for a fresh national endeavour in 2024.

The Unionist media begins 2024 with lurid tales of the retreat of the Scottish national movement and the supposed, immanent wipeout of the SNP at the General Election. But elections come and go. Like the proverbial bus, there will be another one along soon enough.

The real question is whether we are going to give into England’s political predilection for doom and gloom or whether the movement is going to pick itself up, dust itself down, and make 2024 a year for recommitting to the cause of national independence.

Of course, we need to learn lessons. But the SNP government still has until May 7, 2026. That is time to make a serious turn to rebooting the economy, to defying Treasury austerity policies, to taxing billionaire foreign landowners, and to starting a national house-building campaign. All this could serve as the bedrock for winning mass, popular support for independence. All it takes is a little optimism.